Dirty Feed

Lies.

Published 4th January 2024

I can’t remember how old I was. I was at secondary school, I know that. But I mainly just remember the dead badger.

It’s lying at the side of the road. Absolutely still. No blood, or at least not that I could see, although I didn’t investigate it too closely. I might be a teenage boy, but I’m not that kind of teenage boy. Death is safer in books.

But it sticks in my mind. When I get back home, I tell my family what I saw. And it’s that lack of blood which captured my imagination. That badger looked normal, just deathly still. It could almost have been alive… except, it wasn’t.

* * *

Hacker News comments, Terence Eden:

“The best thing about the Dirty Feed blog is that it shows just how fragile history is.

We’re talking about stuff that happened in the last few decades – and yet people’s recollections are faulty, the documentation is inconsistent, and the contemporary commentary is already wrong.

Now extrapolate that back a hundred years. What conventionally accepted history is wrong? What cause and effects have been mixed up?

Popular culture isn’t always well researched – and John shows just how difficult it is.”

* * *

It’s what, a few months on from the dead badger? I can’t remember. Whenever it was, it was a short enough amount of time for my family to remember me telling the story the first time round.

But I’m telling it again. And this time, I get a bit carried away. I talk about the blood. I’m in full flow, in fact. Describing the blood and gore which never, in fact, existed.

And my sister stops me. She’s mildly irritated. Hang on, I said there wasn’t any blood last time, that it was the stillness which really struck me. It was that which was interesting about the story. What’s changed? Why the blood and gore?

I can’t remember my reply. I have a nasty feeling I mumbled something about a “different badger”. But I was caught in a lie, and everyone knew it.

* * *

People lie for many different reasons. They can lie to get evil deeds done. They can lie to big up their tiny role in something important. They can lie because examining the truth is too difficult. They can lie because the truth is just fucking awful, and it’s far easier to just tell everyone what they wish had happened.

But people also lie for more prosaic reasons. They can lie because without the lie, there would be an awkward gap in the conversation.¹ They can lie because right at that moment, the real story doesn’t appear in their head, so they leap to the end with the story which “should” have happened. They lie because they’ve forgotten the details, and it’s embarrassing, and they should know this, so it probably happened this way, right?

(Is it mean to call these kind of things a “lie”? Maybe it is. But if people aren’t careful enough with the truth, then it really does become a matter of splitting hairs, no matter what the reason. Especially if someone keeps repeating it.)

These things get silly. I would have gained zero social capital from lying about that badger, even if I’d got away from it. My tongue simply ran away with itself, and my brain accidentally told the wrong story. The one which might have happened, which does happen to badgers on a daily basis… but in this case, didn’t.

And this is what I think is what usually happens when I’m trying to figure out the truth about the things I write here. I’m sure in some rare cases, there are people acting entirely in bad faith, who are deliberately lying for deeply unpleasant reasons. But I think the majority of lies are the prosaic ones. When unpicking the falsehoods in my Young Ones flash frames pieces, do I really think Paul Jackson was deliberately trying to trick us all with the idea that the “Summer Holiday” flash frame was present on VHS and DVD releases? Of course not. His brain simply leapt ahead and accidentally filled in the gap incorrectly.

But crucially: the effect is often the same. A deliberate lie, or a prosaic one: both have the same effect on the story. To warp it. Sometimes irreparably, if you can’t find out what really happened from elsewhere.

I’m not stupid. Dirty Feed will have all kinds of falsehoods on it. With some of them, I’m merely reporting other people unchallenged; elsewhere will be things I have made up entirely off my own back. But it’s important to at least try and get this stuff right, even when you’re not writing about an important news story. Even when it’s the silliest piece of pop culture nonsense in the world. And I could give you a long, pretentious, deep explanation why. But the real reason is: the truth is usually more interesting.

The stillness of the badger? Beats a bucket of blood any day.

Or podcast. Or DVD commentary. ↩

Dirty Feed: Best of 2023

Published 26th December 2023

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end of year review

The Dirty Feed Christmas Message 2023

Published 25th December 2023

TV Comedy

“This is ‘And The Grass Won’t Pay No Mind’ by Elvis Presley. I didn’t really love Elvis. Elvis wasn’t my person. But a friend of mine said ‘Wait, you gotta listen to it’, and I remember this song was like, when it clicked for me what people were hearing in it…

I don’t know if anything beats a friend, or someone you respect, saying like: try it again. You’ve missed it. Try it again.”

– Greta Gerwig, Desert Island Discs

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greta gerwig

Balls.

Published 23rd December 2023

TV Comedy

Every so often, there’s a comment on this site which deserves a wider audience. Today, it’s Rob Blackmon, asking this question on The Young Ones, “Interesting”:

“Finally, if anyone has access to shooting scripts or otherwise, what was it that Mike was clearly about to say after “Cinderella” entered the flat? Such an obvious, jarring cut and he just gave us that look, like.”

It certainly is one of the most obvious and clunky edits in the whole of The Young Ones. Here’s a reminder:

It is indeed very clear that Mike is about to say something, and we rudely cut away. But what, exactly?

I do, in fact, have access to the script. And the bon mot we were so cruelly deprived of is the following:

CINDERS: I’m looking for my prince.
MIKE: (POINTING UPSTAIRS) Maybe they’re upstairs with my etchings baby. (TO CAMERA) At least I didn’t make a joke about balls or fairy queens.

Certainly not a joke worth keeping. Although what’s vaguely annoying is that if they’d cut away from Mike a second earlier, before he’d had a chance to start looking at the camera, the moment would be far less jarring.

Yes, next year on Dirty Feed, expect more lectures about editing in sitcoms from 1982.

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the young ones

Freeze-Frame Gonna Drive You Insane, Part Five

Published 20th December 2023

TV Comedy

Part One • Part Two • Part Three • Part Four • Part Five

When I started this set of articles about flash frames, right back at the beginning of the year, I never thought it would end up taking five parts to tell this story properly. In particular, I never really wanted to get into the nitty gritty of endless Young Ones repeats.

Unfortunately, as Demosthenes would say: tough shit. It is actually relevant; or, at least, one particular repeat run is. In August 1995, something happened which we can’t entirely avoid. Because not only did The Young Ones begin a fresh, almost-complete run from the start on BBC2… but half the episodes were broadcast in a version never seen before.

“Oil”, “Boring”, and “Bomb” aired in their original, 35 minute versions. “Time” aired in its usual 1985 edit, with the flash frame cut out. But the rest of the episodes aired in brand new 30-minute edits, designed at least partially to make the series easier to repeat by fitting into a standard half hour slot.

[Read more →]

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freeze-frame gonna drive you insane, the young ones

S.P.C.A.

Published 30th November 2023

TV Drama

AUGUSTUS: What a gift you Greeks have. Incidentally, the battle, you know: it wasn’t like that. No, not at all. But you described it poetically, I understand that. It was poetic licence. I’m used to that.

— I, Claudius, Episode 1, “A Touch of Murder”

Watching I, Claudius for the first time recently was a surprising experience.

It wasn’t surprising because it was great. Of course it was great. Of course it was one of the greatest television shows ever made. I’d been told that for years, I just had to get round to watching it. No, the surprise was in how damn funny it was, an aspect of the show I had somehow managed to avoid being informed about. Which I guess is fairly ignorant regardless; even iPlayer describes it as an “acclaimed blackly comic historical drama series”.

LIVIA: These games are being degraded by the increasing use of professional tricks to stay alive, and I won’t have it. So put on a good show, and there will be plenty of money for the living and a decent burial for the dead.

Brilliant though the show is, initial reviews of the series were predictably mixed. And one review in particular has become somewhat notorious. I first became aware of it from Wikipedia:

“The initial reception of the show in the UK was negative, with The Guardian commenting sarcastically in its first review that ‘there should be a society for the prevention of cruelty to actors.'”

This isn’t just an unsourced piece of Wikipedia nonsense; the citation seems reasonable enough. It comes from a November 2012 article in The New York Times, “Imperial Rome Writ Large and Perverse”:

“But looking back wryly weeks ago on the original production, [director] Mr. Wise recalled that it did not seem destined for greatness. In Britain, The Guardian review of “I Claudius,” he said, began, ‘There should be a society for the prevention of cruelty to actors.'”

That article thankfully gives the source for all of its quotes from Herbert Wise: “a documentary that accompanies the 35th-anniversary I, Claudius DVD set”. It isn’t too difficult to work out exactly which documentary: it’s I, Claudius: A Television Epic, which was made for the 2002 DVD release of the series.

Certainly The New York Times is quoting Wise more-or-less correctly; here’s what he says in that documentary verbatim:

HERBERT WISE: I remember The Guardian critic – whose name I remember but I won’t quote it now – starting his criticism by saying: “There ought to be a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Actors.”

This single quote is responsible for all the repeated anecdotes surrounding our supposed Guardian review. The New York Times article itself is syndicated everywhere for a start, but it’s spread well beyond that. For instance, in April 2022, The New European ran a piece called “The show that started a TV toga party”:¹

“The show was a modest ratings hit for BBC2 (averaging an audience of around 2.5 million an episode), but reviews were initially dismissive, with The Guardian snottily proclaiming: “There should be a society for the prevention of cruelty to actors.” But I, Claudius was soon re-evaluated and won greater popularity with repeat transmissions, as well as three Baftas.”

The line has also started to make into books; Arthur J. Pomeroy’s A Companion to Ancient Greece and Rome on Screen (Wiley, 2017) directly quotes Wise:

“Herbert Wise remembered the Guardian critic “starting his criticism by saying ‘There ought to be a society for the prevention of cruelty to actors'” (I, Claudius: A Television Epic, 2002).”

And coming right up to date, in August 2023 the Socialist Worker published the article “Roman history made into classic TV viewing”:

“Initially critics tore it apart. “It was so badly received in its first two weeks,” recalled Sian Phillips, who played Livia, “because it was so different.” The Guardian – which now says it is a masterpiece – loftily proclaimed, ‘There should be a society for the prevention of cruelty to actors.'”

Here’s the problem: The Guardian said nothing of the damn sort.

[Read more →]

Though the URL seems to indicate it was originally called “How I, Claudius Kickstarted Game of Thrones”. The original headline is better. ↩

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best of

The Mystery of Zectron 2000

Published 26th November 2023

Children's TV / TV Comedy

Sometimes my knowledge of a popular science fiction sitcom can reach mildly irritating proportions. When this happens, I do feel the urge to share it with you, and spread the irritation around equally,

Take the following episode of Press Gang Series 4, “Love and War”, broadcast on the 28th January 1992. We are particularly interested in the voice of Colin’s ludicrous electronic briefcase.

Now, the actor for the briefcase isn’t listed in the end credits. Which is peculiar – sure, it’s only a voice, and an electronically altered one at that, but it’s very clearly a comedy performance. But not to worry. Because I recognised that voice.

Here’s a clip from Red Dwarf, “Emohawk: Polymorph II”, broadcast nearly two years later, on the 28th October 1993. The gang are being tracked by a Space Corps External Enforcement Vehicle, whose voice should sound rather familiar:

Luckily, the voice is actually credited in Red Dwarf. It’s Hugh Quarshie, probably best known as Ric Griffin for nearly two decades of Holby City, as well as appearing in The Phantom Menace, and a million and one other things.

And one of those million and one other things? Erm, Press Gang. Specifically, the two parter “The Last Word” in Series 3, broadcast on the 28th May/4th June 1991. With that, the final piece of the puzzle clicks into place: Series 3 and 4 of Press Gang were produced and shot simultaneously.

So who did Quarshie play in “The Last Word”? Answer: Inspector Hibbert, an important character with a crucial moral choice at the end of the show. I won’t spoil that moral choice if you haven’t seen it, but here he is from earlier in the story:

Those two episodes are some of the most serious material the show ever did. Who knew that Quarshie’s turn as an Inspector in a two-parter mediating on gun crime, suicide, and the nature of guilt would be followed up with… a silly talking briefcase? Come to think of it, that seems to be Press Gang in a nutshell.

Still, it really is a shame he wasn’t credited in “Love and War”, but at least Hugh Quarshie got a proper credit in “The Last Word”.

The Last Word Part One credit sequence, featuring Hugh Quarshie as Inspector Hibbert

The Last Word Part Two credit sequence, featuring Hugh Quarshie as Inspector Hibbert

Huge Quarshie?

Oh well.

With thanks to Christopher Wickham. A version of this post was first published in the November issue of my monthly newsletter.

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press gang, red dwarf

“The Most Disgusting Thing I’ve Ever Seen”

Published 23rd November 2023

Film

“The finished movie we see on the screen is often far different from the director’s original conception. The Cutting Room Floor is the intriguing study of the wounds, bruises, Band-Aids, and sometimes miracle remedies that can often improve a film… or destroy it.”

— Back page blurb for The Cutting Room Floor

“Trust me!”

— Rudy Russo, Used Cars

Determining cause and effect when it comes to teenage reading is a tricky thing. Did Laurent Bouzereau’s The Cutting Room Floor (Citadel Press, 1994) inspire my interest in deleted and alternate scenes in film and television? Or was I obsessed with them before picking up the book, which is why I grabbed it from the shelf in the first place?

I think there is a healthy dose of the former in this case, which makes it a very special book for me. Regardless, it’s a wonderful piece of work, and one which I find myself returning to again and again every few years. These days, with a combination of DVD extras and the right websites, much of this information is easier to access than it used to be. But back in 1994, especially for poor sods like me who hadn’t got a hope of getting a LaserDisc player, books like this were how you found out about this stuff.

There are so many tales of cut material which I first read about in that book, and stuck in my head immediately. The different edits of Basic Instinct for one; the attempted rescue of Exorcist II: The Heretic for another. But for sheer childish fun, you can’t beat the following tale about Used Cars, Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale’s satirical black comedy.¹

Bob Gale: “The only thing that got cut out of Used Cars never got to preview. It was something that the studio insisted that we change in the scene when the car salesmen do a commercial at a football game wearing Groucho Marx glasses. The propman on the film had found these glasses that instead of having a fake nose had a penis for it. We thought that was one of the funniest things we’d ever seen, and we thought to ourselves, you know, these car salesmen, that’s exactly the kind of things they would do. So we shot the scene with these glasses. When we sent the dailies to Columbia Pictures, I got this call from the head of production just ripping me apart for putting these pornographic images in the movie. How could we possibly do this? Had we lost our minds? This has gone beyond the grounds of taste. I got my head handed to me on a platter about this.

Columbia was outraged about this scene. I kept telling them to wait until they saw the scene cut together. I got on an airplane [the movie was shot in Phoenix] and screened the scene for Columbia. Frank Price [the head of the studio at the time], who by the way I have absolute admiration and respect for, turned around and said, ‘It’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen. You have to redo this.’ And so we reshot the scene with normal Groucho glasses. However, if you have access to the videotape or the laserdisc and you single-frame through the sequence, you’ll see there is still one shot in that sequence where one of the guys is wearing a set of dick-nose glasses. In fact, an actual image of that was in one of the TV spots. It was one of the laughs that we had on the TV censors! It was only a few frames, but it was on national television.”

This tale stuck in my head, long before I ever watched Used Cars. And when did I finally get round to watching Used Cars? Erm, last month. Hey, it only took nearly two decades. There are other films listed in that book that I still haven’t got round to yet.

[Read more →]

Although with character names like “Roy L. Fuchs”, it’s as much Carry On as anything else. ↩

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best of, edits, robert zemeckis

I’m Not a Title Sequences Person

Published 18th November 2023

TV Comedy

Seriously though, I really do love the opening titles of Reggie Perrin.

Freeze-Frame Gonna Drive You Insane, Part Four

Published 12th November 2023

TV Comedy

Part One • Part Two • Part Three • Part Four • Part Five

It feels like ages since we last checked in with The Young Ones. A brief recap, then. Back in 1984, the BBC had just transmitted the show’s second and final series… but not without some problems. In particular, the final flash frame intended for inclusion in “Summer Holiday” was cut entirely, much to the displeasure of the team. But surely the show was now home and dry?

Well, what do you think?

A hint of what was to come can be found in the following from Hansard. It isn’t normal for questions to be asked of Ministers about a sitcom.¹ And yet on the 27th June 1984, just eight days after Series 2 of The Young Ones had finished airing, that is exactly what happened. Conservative MP for Cardiff West, Stefan Terlezki, was our ersatz Norris McWhirter.

“Mr. Terlezki asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what safeguards there are against subliminal messages appearing on the British Broadcasting Corporation; and if he is satisfied that these are adequate.”

Douglas Hurd, then a Minister of State for the Home Office, gave the following reply:

“I am satisfied that clause 13(6) of the BBC’s Licence and Agreement of 2 April 1981, which requires the corporation not to include subliminal messages in its programmes, provides an adequate safeguard. It is for the BBC’s board of governors to ensure that the provision is observed. I understand that the corporation considers that some brief, unrelated inserts included in a recent BBC comedy series might have been regarded as in breach of the spirit of the provision, and steps were taken to prevent a recurrence.”

Which brings up an interesting question: were subliminal images really banned on the BBC at the time? The above suggests that they were. And yet Paul Jackson, on the 2007 DVD documentary The Making of The Young Ones, seemed to disagree:

“And although it wasn’t illegal at the BBC because the commercial issue didn’t arise, it was raised, and it went up to Bill Cotton… and the edict came down you’ve gotta take it out.

Meanwhile, the Nottingham Evening Post, on the 16th June 1984, reported the following:

“A BBC spokeswoman said the BBC’s Charter does cover subliminal techniques, from the political and advertising point of view, but that these pictures could not be deemed harmful.

“This is a joke flash-frame technique which is harmless”, she said.”

There’s only one way to find out the truth. We need to get hold of a copy of the BBC’s Licence and Agreement. Not this damn thing, dated December 2016, but the document quoted by Hurd from April 1981.

I have a copy. Clause 13(6) states the following:

“The Corporation shall at all times refrain from sending any broadcast matter which includes any technical device which, by using images of very brief duration or by any other means, exploits the possibility of conveying a message to, or otherwise influencing the minds of, members of an audience without their being aware, or fully aware, of what has been done.”

Which sounds suspiciously familiar. Let’s compare this to Section 4(3) of the Broadcasting Act 1981, which IBA-licensed stations were supposed to abide by:

“It shall be the duty of the Authority to satisfy themselves that the programmes broadcast by the Authority do not include, whether in an advertisement or otherwise, any technical device which, by using images of very brief duration or by any other means, exploits the possibility of conveying a message to, or otherwise influencing the minds of, members of an audience without their being aware, or fully aware, of what has been done.”

The similarity in language is obvious. At the very least, the intent for the BBC was exactly the same as for the IBA: to strongly discourage the use of flash frames. Whether it would have stood up in a court of law is a different question, and one which was never answered in practice.

[Read more →]

Or indeed a variety show, but let’s not start all that again. ↩

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